upgrade or rebuild: the world steel associations upgrade to magnolia 4.5
DESCRIPTION
Remmer Stipdonk and Edgar Vonk showcase the success story of Worldsteel's Magnolia Integration, as well as their complex migration from Magnolia 4.3 to 4.5.TRANSCRIPT
Upgrade or rebuild?The Magnolia upgrade for Worldsteel
The dilemma“Ok guys, so we need to take the next step here with our website, don’t you think?”
“Huh? What are you talking about, we just finished this huge project implementing the current one last year?”
“Yeah, I know, but that took us three years, so now we need a new one again… sorry”
“Oh well, great. So what do we need now?”
“Well, uhhm…we need to upgrade to the next version of our CMS, otherwise we’ll lose tech support in a while”
“And what will that bring us from a marketing perspective? Since I’m paying you know…”
“Let’s see, well,… ahh, it’s really important for security stuff???”
@edbananemanEdgar VonkRemmert Stipdonk
Your presenters:
@remstip
]
Started in 199470 specialistsFocus on design and development of platforms
Welcome to Info.nl
]
Curiosity
At Info.nl we are curiousabout the new worldWhat’s next?
Magnolia at Info.nl
We work with Magnoliasince 2008
These are some of ourMagnolia team members
We have a nearshore teamin Sofia, Bulgaria
DigitalStrategy
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What we do, is… platform development
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We like to work for
Van Lanschot BankiersVan Lanschot Bankiers is the oldest independent bank in the Netherlands, founded
in 1737. Van Lanschot's services mainly focus on high net-worth individuals and
entrepreneurs. These services are organized into four business segments: Private
Banking, Asset Management, Business Banking and Corporate Finance and
Securities.
Van Lanschot Magnolia upgrade
Online dialoguewith personalisation
JSP templatesand no STK
Issues withmigration scripts
The Magnolia upgrade for worldsteel
The World Steel AssociationThe World Steel Association, in short worldsteel, is the association for the steel
industry. Worldsteel provides global leadership on all major strategic issues
affecting the industry, particularly focusing on economic, environmental and
social sustainability.
Magnolia implementation
Multi-language
Custom-made .NETmember database
Multi site environment:Internet, extranet and intranet
Intake in 2012
Completed in 2014
Upgrade in 2013
Rebuild member database
Responsive design implementation
Upgrade Magnolia 5
2014-2015:
Until now:
Some details
Extranet with 5000 users
Very, very complex security
Before Magnolia, worldsteel used Sharepoint as a CMS
and 50 GB of documents in the DMS
Started on Magnolia 4.3.5
even more details
15.000 lines of code
400 XML Magnolia configuration files
140 Freemarker template scripts
Member database is a black box
Lots of customisations in AdminCentral
How we prepared ourselves
Functional analysis
Source code inspection
Technical analysis
Preparations for the full takeover
As you see: some serious preparations!
source code cleanup
setup OTAP
takeover of support
setup of procedures
What we thought the project would be like
What the project was really like
Thanks go out to
Previous implementation partner Uniway
The Magnolia support team!
Wordsteel for their patience, help and understanding
Hosting provider Nucleus
Pitfalls
Pitfalls
Lack of documentation and testing means lots of guessing
Content migration is really hard to test and still it failed on the real content
Customisations of the AdminCentral were hard to migrate
Lots of code was hard-copied from Magnolia sources and then customised. Extend where possible!
…and some more advice
Rebuild of the shop was required and extending Magnolia modules is not always easy..
The Magnolia Upgrade tool has its limits
Clean up as much (legacy) code as possible
Decision making
So…should we upgrade or should
we rebuild?
Is your Magnolia version lower than 4.4?
NO YES
Rebuild
Has AdminCentral been seriously customised?
NO YES
Rebuild
Do the templates deviate much from the STK or is Freemarker not used?
NO YES
Rebuild
Is the implementation done by an experienced Magnolia partner?
NO YES
Rebuild
Did the partner apply the Magnolia Best Practices?
NO YES
Rebuild
Were all the previous questions answered positively?
NO YES
UPGRADE AWAY!
But beware of the following upgrade challenges:
A customised workflow engine is difficult to upgrade
The bigger the database, the more difficult to upgrade
Upgrades will always take loads of testing labour
Upgrades will always be hard to impact
Magnolia partners have tech support, so have a partner do the upgrade
Remember, rebuilding means:
Content migration or re-creation
Possible redesign for newer browsers and multi-channel support
Testing, testing, testing
Requirements gathering; beware of the scope creep
The conclusion“So OK I will admit, it was a bumpy ride”
“Well yes, but what matters is the end result. And now we’re ready for the coming years, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are. The next upgrade will be a lot easier, I promise.”
“Sure, I know you by now…”
“But as a matter of fact we now have an up to date, secure, future proof CMS implementation.”.
“Great, then let’s do something with personalisation then. That’s what the people want.”
“Let’s GO!”
